Robert Whitaker: Rethinking Psychiatric Care

From the Buffalo Center for Social Research













Watch Robert Whitaker's presentation:
Rethinking Psychiatric Care: If We Follow the Scientific Evidence, What Must We do To Better Promote Long-Term Recovery?
http://stream.buffalo.edu/shared/sw/research/whitaker.html

Robert Whitaker's Anatomy of an Epidemic investigates a medical mystery: Why has the number of adults and children disabled by mental illness skyrocketed over the past fifty years? There are now more than four million people in the United States who receive a government disability check because of a mental illness, and the number continues to soar. Every day, 850 adults and 250 children with a mental illness are added to the government disability rolls. What is going on?
http://www.robertwhitaker.org/robertwhitaker.org/Anatomy%20of%20an%20Epidemic.html

Psychiatric Drugs as Agents of Trauma by Charles L. Whitfield, MD

http://www.musehousepress.com/Psychiatric_Drugs_As_Agents_of_Trauma_JRS508.pdf

Psychiatric Drugs as Agents of Trauma by Charles L. Whitfield, MD

Excerpted from: The International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine 22 (2010) 195-207

DOI 10.3233/JRS-2010-0508

IOS Press

Volume 22, Number 4, 2010

Private Practice of Trauma Psychology, Psychiatry, and Addiction Medicine; Consultant and Research

Collaborator at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 3462 Hallcrest Dr., Atlanta,

GA 30319-1910, USA and Board of Directors of the Leadership Council on Child Abuse

& Interpersonal Violence, Baltimore, MD, USA

Tel.: +404 843 3585; E-mail: c-bwhit@mindspring.com

Abstract. Drawing on the work of numerous psychiatrists and psychopharmacologists and my own observations, I describe how most common psychiatric drugs are not only toxic but can be chronically traumatic, which I define in some detail throughout this paper. In addition to observing this occurrence among numerous of my patients over the past 20 years, I surveyed 9 mental health clinicians who had taken antidepressant drugs long-term. Of these 9, 7 (77%) experienced bothersome toxic drug effects and 2 (22%) had become clearly worse than they were before they had started the drugs. Based on others’ and my observations I describe the genesis of this worsened condition which I call the Drug Stress Trauma Syndrome.

These drug effects can be and are often so detrimental to the quality of life among  a  distinct but significant minority of patients that they can no longer be considered trivial or unimportant. Instead, they are so disruptive to many patients’ quality of life that their effect becomes traumatic, and are thereby agents of trauma. These observations and preliminary data may encourage others to look into this matter in more depth.

Dollars for Docs Widget

The Dollars for Docs Widget from ProPublica lets you track which doctors/health care providers are taking Pharma money.

"As part of ProPublica’s “Dollars for Docs” series and interactive news application, we've created a small widget that you can embed on your web site. It will let your readers look up whether their health care providers are taking money from the drug companies in our database. The widget shows the amount of money paid to each practitioner in our database, which company made the payment, and in some cases, what the companies saidthey were paying for: speaking fees, consulting, etc. The widget also lists what drugs each company sells so readers can check their own prescriptions.
We’ll be keeping this data up-to-date roughly quarterly, and the widget running on your site will always have the latest data."

http://www.propublica.org/nerds/item/use-our-dollars-for-docs-widget-on-your-site

We are going to grab this gadget, and hope you do too!

WikiLeaks cables: Pfizer used dirty tricks to avoid clinical trial payout

"The world's biggest pharmaceutical company hired investigators to unearth evidence of corruption against the Nigerian attorney general in order to persuade him to drop legal action over a controversial drug trial involving children with meningitis, according to a leaked US embassy cable.
Pfizer was sued by the Nigerian state and federal authorities, who claimed that children were harmed by a new antibiotic, Trovan, during the trial, which took place in the middle of a meningitis epidemic of unprecedented scale in Kano in the north of Nigeria in 1996.
Last year, the company came to a tentative settlement with the Kano state government which was to cost it $75m.
But the cable suggests that the US drug giant did not want to pay out to settle the two cases – one civil and one criminal – brought by the Nigerian federal government."

Link at The Guardian

Shades of John le Carre's The Constant Gardener...



You can help fight these crimes - at The Constant Gardener Trust

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USA: Desperate jobless pharmacists?

WASHINGTON -- Isang Inokon, a headhunter for Amherst Healthcare recruiting firm, posted a Craigslist job ad on November 18 for clinical pharmacists -- but only the kind who already have jobs.

"Do yourself and favor and start looking now," he wrote in the ad. "When you lose your job, you will interview from a position of weakness."
With the U.S. unemployment rate still soaring at 9.8 percent and 6.3 million Americans having been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer, employers can now afford to be extremely picky about whom they hire. In addition to seeking very specific skills, degrees, and numbers of years of experience, many employers are specifying in job ads that candidates be "currently employed" elsewhere to be considered for the position.
Inokon, who has worked in staffing and recruiting for almost 15 years, said he has trouble placing jobless pharmacists because the reality of today's job market is that employers "want somebody who's wanted."
"When you show desperation in your face and your tone during an interview, management is going to pick up on that vibe. They're gonna feel it and see it and notice something's off," he told HuffPost. "It's like somebody who hasn't been on a date in a while -- they're awkward, and the other person's gonna be turned off. It's always better for a person to interview while they're employed."

Why would pharmacists be jobless? Who's next? 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/03/employers-wont-hire-the-u_n_791710.html

Vitamin D deficiency may be cause of chronic pain

"There has been increasing interest in determining the underlying cause of chronic pain syndromes, and vitamin D deficiency is currently under the spotlight.

The body uses vitamin D to help with the absorption of dietary calcium from the small intestine, and calcium is used to help with the development of bone. A deficiency in vitamin D means calcium cannot be efficiently absorbed which results in poorly formed bones. In children this can develop into rickets which causes a bowing of the legs, and in adults this causes osteomalacia, or poorly mineralized and softened bones. This has been found to contribute to chronic muscle and bone pain. There are numerous studies that associate vitamin D deficiency in patients who suffer from various conditions such as osteoporosis, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, certain forms of cancer, depression, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, headache and migraine, neuropathies, and chronic pain..."

Click on the link for the full article:
http://www.morningjournal.com/articles/2010/11/19/living/health/doc4ce44996d98ee697127793.txt